


Under Friendly Fire

by ScarlettsLetters



Series: A Tale of Two Soldiers [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Winter Soldier (Comics)
Genre: Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Angst and Porn, Boys Kissing, Bucky Barnes Has Issues, Captain America Steve Rogers/Modern Bucky Barnes, Conditioning, Flashbacks, Gentle Sex, Hand Jobs, Hurt Steve Rogers, Hydra (Marvel), M/M, Makeup Sex, Past Bucky Barnes/Steve Rogers, Porn With Plot, Post-Coital Cuddling, Prostate Massage, Sam Wilson Is a Good Bro, Sassy Bucky Barnes, Shrunkyclunks, Stucky - Freeform, Top Steve Rogers, War Veteran Steve Rogers, Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-06
Updated: 2018-04-03
Packaged: 2019-03-27 22:24:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 20,619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13890393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScarlettsLetters/pseuds/ScarlettsLetters
Summary: An agent of HYDRA activates Bucky during an Avengers mission to kill Captain America. The fugue ends in disaster. How can he ever forgive or trust himself around the man he loves? Love just may not be enough..





	1. Best Served Cold

Smoke hangs heavy in the air, the half-demolished warehouse crackling with lightning and half-hearted gunfire spat from one last pocket of resistance. Dust obscures the silhouettes leaping over tangled iron scraps warped out of true by meeting the broad side of a hammer.

Shouts in a slurry of German end abruptly to the pinball clatter of a blurred shield deflecting off metal struts. Another flash of sparks and a supporting beam collapses. Crumbling brick and sprayed debris rain down in the uneven silence. Springing backwards, Captain America hits the ground in a three-point crouch, reaching up to seize his shield.

By any standards, the Avengers are successful within the mission parameters. From an adjacent building barely visible through the curling fog, a glimmer of motion might go unnoticed. Not the pair of metallic clanks.

Bucky Barnes survived a war living on his instincts. He hardly flinches now, dropping his gun and spinning to knock the slender brunette beside him to the ground.

“Incoming!” he shouts, lunging over Wanda to cover her with his broader body. She instantly curls to protect herself, hands cupped over her neck.

They’re both survivors, fashioned by violence into hollow-eyed creatures struggling to put their lives back together.

Elsewhere across the property, Avengers dive for cover. A brittle pulse wave rattles the overturned dumpsters and the secondary charge throws the heavy, rusty metal buckets ten feet back. Debris spills off brick facades; the damaged warehouse becomes little more than rubble, the cacophony of crashing air compressors and falling walls a rumbling crescendo that abruptly halts.

Wanda shudders in time with the tremors racing through the pocked pavement. The metallic noise singing overhead follows Sam’s shadow as he veers in a tight circle, pistols out, ready to bring down any lingering resistance.

“Status report!” Captain America has never ceased to be Steve Rogers first, concerned about his people before himself. He retreats from the warehouse, shield raised against another volley of gunfire or an opportunist hurling another pulse grenade.

Confirmations spill over their comms links as each member of the team calls in -- Clint, Natasha, the muffled voice of Wanda on behalf of herself and Bucky.

Sam’s answer is a shout and a copper flowering of fire overhead, aimed through the choking dust and fog robbing him of clear sight lines. “Motion on your six, Barnes!”

Silhouettes barely emerge but Bucky flings his hand out, lifted from his crouch by old reflexes. His slow, deliberate advance puts him square into the crosshairs, and he can only hope the younger woman has the smarts to stay down.

Footsteps. Someone charges at the side while another of those charged rounds streak out, striking the vibranium in his bicep and palm. Too close: the energy pulses up the prosthetic, absorbed with the same ease he takes the morphed German thug slamming into him.

“ _Traitor_ ,” hisses the beastly, bald man covered in strange pinpoint green tattoos. Nothing in the debrief warned about this sort of activity.

Bucky slugs him across the jaw, spinning the man around into the stream of bolts intended for his chest. The smell of burning flesh rolls over him in a wave.

“You’re going home.” The burnt thug flops to his knees, blood on his teeth and pouring down his chin. “Heil Hydra.”

“Hell no.” Bucky kicks the man square in the chest, swiveling to look through the grim veil of charcoal dust. He backs away as fast as he can, reaching out for cover. He can’t even see his own hand.

Spectral whispers hang in the ghostly plane, chasing him at a choked whisper. " _Leviathan sixteen_ ,” the thug gurgles in German and faceplants on the pavement. 

Bucky staggers and catches himself before the debris skidding under his rugged sole brings him down. One of those shots came at a high angle, and he flings his arm up. Too late.

A dark, glittering missile snaps over his shoulder, swooping up in pure defiance of physics. No matter how fast the AIM enforcer runs for the door inside the abandoned loft, he can’t outrun uru with a storm bound into its soul. The hammer streaks up to slam into his spine, and reverses course, headed back to Thor’s outstretched hand.

“That’s all of them,” Natasha says over the comms link.

Steve glances around. “Form up and let’s get a final sweep.”

The one call to bring them home is a welcome relief, even for seasoned soldiers bestowed long life and rapid healing in some cases. They emerge out of the gloom, gathering together. All but one.

Bucky freezes, throwing a long, impassive survey over his shoulder at the five team members assembling in the middle of a cracked street. Avengers, all. He locks eyes for an instant with the man wearing the dark navy helmet, the white star on his chest.

A moment later he bolts, striking out through the shadows. They all stare for a moment.

“What the hell is his problem?” Clint jerked a thumb after the receding figure.

“I’ll go after him,” Nat is already in motion, halted only when Steve drops his hand on her shoulder.

His response is barely a whisper, taut with concern. “I’ve got this one.” When she gives a jerk of her chin in acknowledgment, he speaks up louder where they all hear. Game face and game voice on. “You clean up here. Barton, get that bird around. Sam, get us a status report we don’t have any stragglers.”

“Roger, Rogers!” Clint calls back.

“You still aren’t funny!” Steve isn’t smiling. His heart thuds and not from the exertion as he dashes into the dark.

* * *

Ink-blot memories stain the abandoned street, bringing forth spectres in empty doorways and upper floor windows. Tension crawls down his back under the tac-vest, old instincts screaming at him to take cover behind cars scattered along the coveted street parking.

Twinkling blue and scarlet lights strobe the distance, marking the NYPD perimeter, but the uneven blare drives his agitation through the roof.

Thoughts wisp out of reach, a brief surfacing from the white winter fog. Bucky chokes on breath, throwing a bewildered look behind him. Nothing makes sense. Cover, he needs cover  _now_.

Old habits fit like a glove, training from times and locations he no longer clearly remembers --  _thank the patron saint of Unfortunate Cases --_ and that, too, terrifies Bucky at some visceral level. Falling back into the frosty rote responses of Winter bespeaks trouble. One slip, he might be on his knees with the  Skorpionaimed at the navy cap covering cropped golden hair of America’s greatest hero or the arrogantly high cheekbone chiseled from Asgardian perfection.

His boots barely leave a sound as he darts for shelter in a brick-lined foyer of a closed smoke shop. Bars on the windows obscure glimpses of Marlboros and Camels, the latest copies of the morning _New York Times_ blaring on about another defense appropriation going straight to Stark Industries.

 _Nepotism at its finest_ , quotes one senator who hasn’t ever been hunkered down at a meeting among military brass, trying to figure out how the hell you counter Chitauri weapons in terrorist hands.

His metal fingers spontaneously open and close, sick fear a close second to the jittery disgust coiling its way through his stomach and down into his bowels.

Breathe, the whole trick to overcoming every kind of emotional distress or a panic attack is breathing. He tried a dozen of those useless self-help apps, guided meditation and deep breathing, finding nothing comforting when the adrenaline kicks off the remnants of programming supposed to be scoured from his brain pan by a 16-year-old kid prodigy.

Sixteen, and she thinks she conquered the world from that shattered lab in Wakanda. Full lips turned up in an impish smile whenever she talks about teaching him peace, the way  _her_ people have practiced it for thousands of years, like he’s a child rather than a century old.

Shuri’s face slides away in memory as he spots movement in an upper window across the street, a brick tenement five floors high. Perfect for getting clear angles. Knees bend and he sinks down in the storefront, a smaller target, whipping out a pistol and pointing straight at the empty, vacant panes staring in somber review.

The conditioning rises from the deep and pulls him back under.

* * *

 

Look for the twitch in blinds, the silhouette on the glass like smoke on water. Breathing halts. His pulse drops out of the frantic beats into a slower cadence, plunging over the cliff when crystalline focus settles in. His frosty eyes lose the fraught quality at the corners, sloughing off the old skin of panic and compassion.

Mission operating parameters slam into place around the young man dreaded across the western theatre of the Cold War. His gloved hands grasp the pistol grip comfortably, steady from his brace as he traces a diagonal line across the windowpane.

Something jitters the curtains, a faint stir. He calculates for a moment, correcting his aim a moment, and fires. Glass cracks at the third floor window, a neat circle opening. Hot lead pierces the questionable kale-green IKEA curtains.

Waiting is the worst part, but old hat by now. Counting off the seconds, he waits for a retorting snap of fire or a body to slump against the ground, disturbing the way the curtains weakly flutter.

Movement at the corner of his eye brings the pistol around, pointed down the street. Someone dives behind a parked minivan, too broad and tall to be a woman, too competent finding cover for a civilian.

That’s a target then, someone kicked up five rungs in his threat assessment. Anyone willing to approach an armed man is a special breed of fool. Experience teaches him those smart enough to ghost behind a van for maximum protection against an assailant isn’t a run of the mill pedestrian caught up in streaming news on their phone.

Reason enough to roll back and check the cartridge, loosening a combat knife sheathed at his side. Bucky has vanished into the cool familiarity of Winter, solace in the cutting, Siberian clarity of violence. Never mind his joints vaguely ache from jumping off the building earlier, those pains matter little. The serum takes care of the worst in record time. Whatever bastardized chemicals and compounds formulated by Department X’s expert scientists were pumped into his veins, he no longer cares about cuts or bruises or lacerations that don’t cut deep to the nerves or sever an artery.

Not his fucking problem right now.

In his world, there is only the living body hidden somewhere behind the van and the long corridor hemming in his nameless, faceless quarry. Patience serves as well on the savannah as the urban jungle, and few hunters alive match the Winter Soldier.

He spots an elbow against the side view mirror of a truck squeezed crookedly on the opposite side of the street. Another painted blotch smeared against a shop for lease, ducking, creeping along the bumper of the van.

Waiting, the name of the game, until that man -- he’s sure the stranger is male -- pops out to advance or take a shot. No hint of a gun yet, but Bucky rules out nothing. He rests his shoulder against the wall and turns. Honed instinct screams at him to drop. Long ago he learned to stop questioning the gut reaction and act, and he does now, diving back to imperfect shelter up against the bricked in foyer, lashing out at the door with his boot. The kick breaks the lock and dents the metal frame, twisting the aperture off its hinges. Inside offers better cover than out.

Shards of brick blown off the corner rain down on his crouched body, the ballistics pointing to somewhere up, across the street, too close for comfort. Too precise a shot inches off his shoulder to be an accident. A professional, then, someone up there getting his notice.

Two changes the battlefield instead of one. He slides across the ground and rolls through the frame of the door, spinning in his progress, putting his back up against the high lip of the storefront display. Stacked up bottles crowd the shelf, giving added coverage and an early warning system. Any disruptions ought to make the cola ripple, vibrations traveling through the liquid more accurate than his body, anything short of a Richter scale.

Bucky exhales, sliding up to the refrigerated pop fridge to listen for telltale giveaways of advance: feet hitting concrete, squealing tires, the hum of jet flames under boots. The world expanded his knowledge of such defensive and offensive capabilities in the last few years, but nothing much impresses his distorted mind. Under the surface, thoughts form and fade in the white abyss.

There is only the mission. There is only the hunt, approaching nearer to his temporary hideaway by the second. Limited clatter is telling. He counts to five, and stalks through the long aisle leading to the backroom, tearing the door open. Boxes do nothing to impede his long stride, another door to the back alley dismissed with the same contempt as the first.

Options in a narrow alley are slim. Clear left or right, or take a fire escape to the top of the building. Bucky covers the distance to the next intersecting street in less than five seconds at a lope, muffling his boots against the filthy concrete.

Berlin, New York, Volgograd: back routes are the same in every city, at the end of the day.

Quick inspection finds no trouble waiting there, but his sweep ends at the field of vision and he moves behind a ridiculous little teal Fiat 500c. His metal hand slides along the bumper, hooking underneath for a firm grip, prepared to hurl that at any trouble.

Like the man in navy bursting out behind a car, charging for him.

He wrenches the Fiat up and flings the vehicle in the man’s way. It bounces end over end in a volley of cracked glass, the orchestral symphony of destruction he knows so well. This is what they made him for.

His toss sends the hatchback shuddering and tumbling in a squeal of steel. Eat that, then.

His foe brings an arm up as though to deflect the car by sheer will, but he doesn’t slow, taking the door at full run and leaping into the air. Recalculation is necessary, the risk he presents clearly much worse than a civilian with a hero complex or a trained police officer. Cops in America don’t do that.

Bucky doesn’t hesitate to watch the descending arc of the Fiat or the blue-clad warrior. His instincts and training overcome that vague bestirring of unease low in the belly. He points the pistol straight at the white star on the chest -- foolish, putting so helpful a target on someone -- and fires three times, a neat triangular formation that doesn’t miss.

 _Pop, pop, pop_. He squeezes them off, prepared for the headshot to end the problem.

Too soon. The painted shield swinging around intercepts the bullets, deflecting them. Deadened pea slugs drop to the ground, stripped of their momentum.

A setback, albeit not a fatal one, calling for a different set of tactics. His handlers trained him for this eventuality too.

He knows the shield, a dome striped in a medieval rondelle of red and blue, the white star prominent at the heart. 

_Captain America._

Trouble, but not insurmountable, but significantly more problematic than a mere ex-Marine gone into law enforcement.

Bucky kites around the side, looking for an open position, racing down the pavement and swinging around the lamppost to hoist himself up to take another shot.

* * *

 

_1943\. Ardennes Forest._

Automatic gunfire strafes the trees packed too closely together, sending a hail of bark and torn leaves down upon the two men crouched in a foxhole. 

"Cover!" hisses Steve.

Old instinct already keeps Bucky low to the earthen embankment sheltering them, but he tucks his head closer to his hunched shoulders and shrinks back. Only the barrel of his gun peeks through the rough screen of dead fall he uses to conceal their whereabouts.

A branch cracks overhead. Pitiful splinters blown free by large calibre rounds erupt in all directions.

"Man, what do the Germans have against trees?"

"They're the enemy."

"In collusion with us, huh? I'll plant one when we get back in the Ardennes' honour. As soon," Bucky spits out a splattering of dirt and leaf litter tumbling onto his damp face. "As soon as we're out of this shit hole."

"Keep your head down and mind your tongue."

Steve lifts his shield against the debris, careful to angle the dome to protect Bucky. Bullets slant through the darkness and stipple the forest floor, dirt flung in all directions. Mud splashes off the painted vibranium, marring the blue ring and white star to the point of invisibility.

Not that it matters much. Bucky can't even make out the emblem in the smoky gloom. Rainfall shimmers through the pines and oaks, transforming a surely pretty natural landscape into a cold, swampy marsh. 

They both hunker low, the vibranium ceiling as grand as any building left standing after the press of tanks and bombardment by Allied and German forces against one another. They're fifteen miles behind enemy lines, pinned down after stealing a motorcycle near Mierchamps, and Nazi soldiers gave chase until reaching the gloomy, ancient woods. 

Only their breathing fills the foxhole, Bucky's rough and ragged from exhilaration. He makes an effort to keep the adrenaline from overtaking him, eyes narrowed as he counts mentally in his head. Senses strain to capture the least glimmer of noise hinting at an approaching tank or a rifleman on foot, braving the lightless murk.

Nothing.

Minutes trickle by. He can't stay alert forever, but the situation can change in a heartbeat. That steady thud of his dances in his veins and fills his ears, timed to the soft exhalation tickling his dark, unruly curls. The military grade shave, tight on the sides and longer on top, long since vanished and now Bucky has to face a mop of chocolate brown hair long enough to fall in his eyes. 

The ruffle of hot breath cooling around his ears stirs the fine hairs on his nape and dusts the thin, wet strands. His gloved hands grip the stock of the machine gun tighter. Once again, Steve Rogers drives him to total distraction. Neither of them have any space, crouched together with centimeters to spare.

"You mind?" he mutters.

Steve straightens and slopes back until his shoulder harness bumps up against the muddy anterior wall. He murmurs a muffled apology, water trickling around them both.

"Sorry, Buck." 

"Like we're playin' hide and seek again, you know?"  
  
"Bit higher stakes than we had in Brooklyn," Steve says, voice low.

The monotony of waiting proves fatal more often than impulse. Out there wait a line of soldiers, maybe a truck trying to maneuver on the rutted, ruined lane cutting between Belgian and French villages. After the bombardment, stillness comes as an untrustworthy ally. Smoke reeks in Bucky's nose, and his lungs burn.

"Could be worse."

"Yeah?" 

"Might not have a roof over our heads." 

Clanging on the shield wouldn't be a good idea, so Bucky pats the captain's shoulder instead.

Steve props his shield against the rough embankment, his arm unfailing. That barrier helps to keep the drizzle from soaking into their clothes. Dirt streaks Bucky's navy jacket and he stands in at least an inch of water, brackish and slimy around his boots. 

They try to endure the long waits together when pinned down in the easy camaraderie of boys who shared a bedroom and then young men staring at the stars or walking around Central Park quietly. Bucky tends to fill the void more than Steve, who seems content to listen to the world go by. Too many words could be fatal out here, and he struggles after the first fifteen minutes.

His damp clothes itch. His knees hurt, and the settling cold gnaws into his bones in a way he'd forgotten for years. Been a long time since he stuffed the leaks in the apartment walls with wadded up newspaper and tried to patch the drafty windows in Becky's room using filched cellophane. 

Clenching his jaw stops his teeth from chattering. Steve of course never quivers but that magic serum pumped into him makes him damn near impervious to every extreme that nature thinks to throw at him. 

Bucky is infinitely aware of the changes. Not just Steve growing to the size of an oak tree trunk, but the subtler things. He smells the same, a bit of bourbon and leather mixed with his natural musk. The warmth he radiates is akin to a heater, sinking into Bucky's spinal column and his hip closest to Steve.

Adding insult to injury, the rain builds up and patters down on them. Wet and muddy conditions make their temporary shelter a miserable camp. "Terrible place to camp, ain't it? Next time we should choose somewhere aboveground."

Working out a crick in his elbow, Steve flexes his gloved hand. "You thinking a cabin?"

"Yeah, place with a proper bed." Bucky whispers but the clack of his teeth betrays him the way his stiff shoulders and locked joints don't. "Thick quilt on it, mounds of scratchy wool blankets. How's that sound?"

Steve hears the tightness in his voice, surely has to, else why would he shuffle up from behind? 

"Sounds great, Buck."

He tries not to pay attention to the fact a broad thigh slides against his leg, and the slightest rotation would pull him tight and close to the super soldier's warmer, strong body. The blond is like one of the damn trees, unbothered by the cold, completely immune by sinking his roots into the clammy soil. Acutely aware of the chill, Bucky scrunched his damp toes inside his boots, hoping to still feel them.

"Maybe a wood stove. You know, I wouldn't mind chopping wood. This whole damn forest," he adds.

Wood snaps. Another few bullets crack off to the southwest, further away, but still too close for comfort. 

Without saying a word, Steve envelopes his shoulders by wrapping an arm around them. Gravity pulls them together, back to chest. God has a little mercy for his shabby soldiers. The thick military grade coat cushions Bucky without cutting off the impression of firm muscles rippling against his spine.

He could protest, but he won't, as they nestle close as puppies in that foxhole under a leaden grey sky.

Dawn won't come for hours, and the only choice for Captain America and Bucky Barnes will be to wait for a break to attempt an escape. Men die in situations like this. He knows the army suffers attrition by guys falling asleep and never waking up, going sluggish in the cold until they can't be saved.

Steve is his talisman against hypothermia for all he stands stiff and unsure in the soldier's engulfing arm. But he cannot remain aloof forever, especially not when the gradual heat seeps into his neck and he starts to succumb to the adrenaline drop.

It's not right his hands slacken around the gun, or that his shoulder presses into the hollow of Steve's shoulder. He needs to stay alert and ready, but the pair of them melt into one another around the edges. Lids grow heavy over his eyes, and the dark is an unchanging undulations of charcoal grey streaks under darker boughs, anyways.

His head dips, heavy as a meadow flower. His mouth graces the cuff of a sleeve with a kiss and he nuzzles into the warmth drawing him in, irresistible in a place of such inhospitable cold. A kiss, and a lingering trace of his mouth plotting lower in his dreamy fugue.

"What are you doing, Bucky?" A murmured question lies at his ear. Not enough to startle, but he draws back from tipping into sleep altogether.

"Mm?" 

No verbal response from Steve. Warm breath on his scalp tickles and leaves tingles racing from the impact point. Bucky struggles to keep his eyes open. 

"Sorry. You mind?"

A yawn threatens to break free and he swallows it, looking sleepily back at the masked visage softened by the lack of light. In their darkness, the only heat is the warmth their bodies generate together.

Steve hesitates. He might say something, a silenced restraint checking whatever thoughts move behind his eyes.

Bucky won't ever understand what compels him. The man held him through the night and still intends to, suffering the wet and the persistent, numbing cold. Mustn't let Steve suffer, not ever. He tilts his head and rubs his cheek to that shaven jaw. 

"Barnes."

Their lips almost touch, the kinetic pressure throwing a spark of electricity that stings nerves begging for a touch. Hardest word he's ever had to say in his life but Bucky pushes it out, rising out of dark, muzzy sleep.

"No?"  

Hesitation almost tears him in half and stomps on the splinters of his bloodless heart. A puckered line draws golden brows together. He turns his head away from seeing the uncertainty in Steve's expression, the reminder _this isn't done, good men don't think that way_ , not wired to want their childhood best friends if they're a man and you're one and--

Steve kisses him.

Soft, like the mists tend to land among the trees and creep forth in a smothering, soft expulsion that flows cool on the skin. Not cool, him, the promised heat of his mouth enough to melt lead and puddle steel.

The kiss is guileless and doubtful, even shy, but the body pressed up to his is not. Arms tighten around Bucky to secure them together safely against winter drizzling down. Sweet mint and something like rain give a flavour he's prepared to drink for hours, and he rotates to meet and honour that kiss with his lips, reverential and eager and too forward and bold.

He's dreamt of this for years.

"Yes," he murmurs.

Steve's answer is everything. "Yeah."

Then they have no words, only one another, cuddled tight in a foxhole deep in the forest, moving in slow motion, suspended out of time until they break even then. In that furtive exploration, release comes slow and hard into one another's arms.

* * *

 

“What are you doing, Buck?” Captain America shouts at him, the surprise and weary acceptance heavy on his call a twist in the gut if Bucky Barnes was still home. He isn’t. The man in his place does not respond to those vocal appeals, and the frigid stare and salvo aimed at chest and knee tells Steve everything he wishes he didn’t know.

The vibranium shield takes the precise murdering shots, and he swings his arm back, losing enough momentum for the round projectile to knock Bucky off his feet. The angle means to rebound off the brick storefront, enough to leave a fresh maroon divot punched into weathered, fired clay.

Bucky waits until the very last moment and throws himself back, narrowly missed by the spinning disk. He could catch it -- the whirling, hissing implants in his arm have more than enough vibranium integrated within to absorb the shock and redistribute the energy -- but that would slow him and now, now Captain America is unarmed by his one best defense.

Crossing the road at a run, he takes aim while in mid-bolt, watching the American twist around to face him too late, that look of horror dawning in sunny blue eyes and the red mouth opening to shout not dissuading Bucky in the least. Now, with a clear shot, he can aim right past the shoulder for the ribs.

“Barnes,  _no_! _”_ A woman shouts at him from on high, too late, and he dimly acknowledges the treachery in listening. If she involves herself, this should be an open and shut case. The pistols on her hips are as accurate as his, he glimpses in that gelid, elongated moment that one mounted in her right is pointed square into the melee.

What stops the Black Widow from firing? Hesitation on her part, a certain kill on his, and that will be another thing to report to the Red Room. Complacency rarely factors into Natasha’s thoughts. Another factor then.

Too late to react to what, though he notes it. The bullets squeezed out in flight,  _one two three_ , are sure to be his crowning achievement for the Motherland. One of them will inflict a fatal shot on Steve Rogers’ leonine heart. Even the serum cannot stop a fatal exit wound.

 _Strike for the heart, not the eye._ Long ago rules dictated in Russian in a dingy room before one in a parade of nameless trainers pressed a bullet to his temple.  _Death begins in the heart, not the head_.

He feels no victory in the moment. The hot wash of triumph belongs to lesser men. His plans focus purely on getting out, confirming the kill at a distance. With Captain America, one can never be sure.

Time accelerates, snaps into place. Shouts and chaos blossom out of the melting frame of his combat fugue. Luminous poppy bright light flares up in front of him, ripping into the space between Steve Rogers and his best ally, Bucky Barnes, just like in the movies.

Except no movie on a reel back then ever showed this kind of talent, a dusky-haired girl twisting her hands in midair to contain the whip crack speeds of the bullets within her haloing magic.

The witch. Next time she goes down first, best finished quick; she brings the risk of the sentient security system watching him. Bucky processes this in a heartbeat, and the next agonizing pangs alight on every rictus-hard limb as thousands of volts of plasma slam through him into the ground.

The force lifts him up, knocking him askew from his path on a high arc. Through throbbing pain and twitching muscles refusing to answer the signals from the scrambled brain, he manages somehow to twist around, intending to come down shoulder first.

“Od’s blood,” bellows a snarl and he finds the shadow descending past him, covered in faint blue motes crawling around temples and brow, racing down the scale-covered arm hewn larger than life.

 _Thor_. He dreads the wrath of no Avenger worse than the Asgardian prince, save the monster locked inside the physicist. Banner can die same as any with a bullet in the brain pan, but Thor is something else.

Any bullet shot at him stops square on the armour if not the flesh, based on casual measurement and experience. The Winter Soldier has never tried for the eye or the fleshy soft palate behind those beautiful white teeth, hale and grand as the rest of him.

A fist descends, faster than he can force his body to respond, and the force ought to compound the brutal landing on asphalt that immediately cracks and chips when Bucky smashes into it.

More pain, cold to the hot, bursts up his spine and the supple cord bows to the force. More shouting rings through the hollow waves smashing into his skull, erasing all sense of words that might be managed.

If this is his end, the Winter Soldier finds no certainty. Steve is down, that much he sees through the shock haze of his eyes cooking from the electric aura and his laboured breaths full of ozone.

* * *

 

Thor gasps for breath and pushes away the birthright of his mantle, the god of the storm altogether too aware of humanity’s fragility. Even those enhanced by their strange medicines have frailties the youngest toddler among his people would lack, and the man staring up at him possesses too many flaws riddled through him.

The wrong touch, he might shatter.

Of course, responsibility falls to Thor Odinson, where simmering battle rage stalks in arm’s reach and the others in air and running down the road have questions without answers.

“You shall be in my debt,” announces the blond, and hauls Bucky into his broad, scale-wreathed arms.

Agony contorts a warrior’s mask out of Sam, spiraling through the divide in the buildings. Too late he spots blood on the ground and its source, splashed out alongside Steve’s curled body.

His shout chases after the others, a bellow to add to the meteorological fury. “Wait just a second! You can’t run off with him after this.”

Natasha is already tearing into the Kevlar tunic, pressing her palm down for more pressure. “Not now!”

Lightning crackles around them again, the clouds spiraling in a turbulent grey mass. Steel-streaked cumulus thickens in speed and churns on itself, building up the ozone gasp of anticipation.

Organized chaos erupts around them, a last vision witnessed through the first motes blossoming around the god of thunder and the convulsing assassin in his steady grasp. Wanda is on her knees next to the prostrate body of Captain America, her eyes glowing a steady ruby, fingers curled and flexing the way a harpist plucks arpeggios on glistening wires. Opposite her, Natasha continues to stabilize him, her gloves soaked in blood as she maneuvers a patch over the exit wound. The edges seal on contact with the skin, a temporary fix but one keeping Steve from bleeding out his life onto a dingy stretch of asphalt.

Clint hisses into his comm link, calling down the Quinjet from looping on autopilot. The winds buffet its wings while the glowing blue turbines flare in aquamarine glimmers, static nymphs crawling around its wings. 

None of them dare to look at Thor. His many moods are no secret to the team, but the boiling heavens and crackling outrage speak to a different level of divine anger incarnated.

Spontaneous convulsions already slow in the tasered soldier slung over his forearms, held in a tight embrace that prevents the deadly vibranium strung prosthetic from smashing into ribs or discharging a brutal bolt that even a god, one as mighty as Thor, would take pause at. Nothing like a smoking hole in armour and missing tissue in the chest to stop an advance.

“What are you doing?” Sam, wings wide, swings down to earth in front of them. “He just shot Cap. You can’t take him!”

They all know the struggles, the slow retreat from madness that ended Bucky’s freedom last time somewhere in Siberia. Six months on and the inevitable relapse leaves blood on the pavement, fear a tang on the air.

Thor stands in a martial stance, his feet wide apart, daring them to come. Glittering sparks fill his eyes, the silver highlights of his armour aglow in witch fire.

“Man, don’t make me choose,” Sam says, squinting behind his goggles.

Waving her gore-mired glove, Natasha scoops her arms underneath the broad line of Steve’s shoulders. His face is greying, beaded in sweat, and fluttering lashes show the acute pain in his eyes. She jerks her head at his boots. “We have to get him evacuated to the Quinjet,  _now_ , if we have any chance of stabilizing him.”

Undecided between pursuit or helping, Sam leaves too long a gap. Wanda winds her arms around Steve’s legs, lifting him in synchronization with Natasha, the worst kind of dance imaginable. They start to dash to the Quinjet that pirouette in a neat ballet above the intersection, calling them home.

At the center of the blowing gales, Thor holds a choice, a key. Freedom or violence.

“Get Rogers and Barnes into the jet! We’re better off freezing him.” Clint’s call carries the tight vibrations of the same horror they all fear, coiling around hearts, begging for an outlet. An arrow or a shot to the heart would end all the indecision, and the tense lines of his body are clear as day to a warrior.

Time to go. Thor surveys the wreckage and nods, a mental shout released into the dark. He shoves need and urgency along the link sparkling in the first incandescent shade of rainbows.

 _Come, Heimdall, open the path_.

Wanda still clutches Steve under knees, her thoughts holding the charged blossom of energy. Tears are absent; she never cries anymore, but the harrowed look on those sculpted golden features give warning enough.

Thor meets her eyes and finds them swamped in the brilliant scarlet light. Bucky stirs, and the shouts to get clear evaporate in the surge of brilliant citrine and gold shot green, pouring across them both.

Another shock to the overwhelmed system breaks through that pained fugue. The assassin cracks his eyes open but can’t see a thing except the vibrant silhouette of infinity. He seizes again, lurching forward as his spine tries to carve a path through Thor’s vambrace-wrapped forearm and flee for the nearest plane to China.

“ _Steve!"_  The one hoarse scream torn past his lips goes spiralling to points unknown and leaves the barest whisper in the distraught confusion laid upon the New York street.

They both jolt on an invisible hook that seizes them, inescapable gravity of the Bifrost slamming upon the Asgardian and the assassin to carry them away.


	2. Fox Holes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In a flashback, Bucky and Steve have one of their first days together during the war. Promises are made that can't be kept in the tragic turn of events in their future.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for the ongoing encouragement! Your kudos and comments mean a lot, so don't hesitate to leave your thoughts.

_1943\. Occupied France_.

* * *

Life has invisible lines, waymarkers on the path that signal a crossroads. Go through the crossroads, and there’s no turning back, no return from whence you came.

Bucky pores over the _ersatz_ coffee and chews on the roughly milled bread, head tucked low. Bruises smudge the hollows of his eyes, but that’s nothing new nowadays. His hosts look the same, thin and wan, whittled away by the chronic missed meals and interrupted sleep.

Only Steve looks remotely healthy, hale as an ox, sleek and bright among the grey-skinned farmers giving them halting intelligence in French of the latest troop movements and dispositions of country roads. He stands head and shoulders above the rest of them, never stoop-backed or beaten down. War weighs heavy upon the farmers, curving them towards the earth, whittling away their vitality.

He feels shame wash over him, and tucks the scraps of bread away into his pocket. No telling when their next meal comes, and foraging is a desperate business in this corner of France.   
“The Germans will shoot you if you snare so much as a rabbit,” warned one of the older men, pork pie hat jammed low onto his head.

Now Steve draws lines in the dirt with a stick, corrected by local wisdom for paths to take, bridges to avoid.

He turns to their meager belongings to gather them up, checking ammunition and sharpening his knives, rebuckling straps on his kit.

When they break up for the morning, for gathering even under cover of a ruined barn is never safe, Bucky has swept the hayloft clean of any signs of their presence. Rotting straw strewn over the boards speaks to a season of vermin as visitors and little else.

He looks up at the silhouette blocking the doorway and takes aim without thinking, gun pointed at the chest.

Steve raises his hands in surrender. “Easy. I didn’t think I was quite that bad?”

Two spots of colour erupt in Bucky’s cheeks, and for once, the quick-witted, smart-mouthed Brooklyn kid can’t find any way to respond that lacks a stammer.

He drops the gun, holster in it back at his side, muttering apologies and hanging his head.

“You look a bit tired,” Steve says without preamble, assessing the barn using the same practiced eye that Bucky turned upon the lumps of wilted hay, the broken tools, cast-offs that attract no interest from local scrappers trying to earn an extra franc or mark.

“Yeah, and whose fault is that?”

Smart words from a smart mouth.   
The barbs catch Steve unaware and he puts his hand to his mouth, slanting a look that might be unreadable were they not best friends of twenty years and more. Every mood he wears like an old suit and James Buchanan Barnes sure knows the difference between perturbed and _bashful_ , a boy caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

His heart thuds and turns over an uneven beat. Not a damn wink of sleep until late, up before pre-dawn lightened the sky, and he looks probably like death warmed over. Steve looks ready to leap on the stage of history and grab Hitler by the proverbial horns.

“Some things are damn unfair,” he says, apropos of nothing, to an arched eyebrow and a puzzled intensity in Steve’s blue eyes.

“You,” Bucky gestures broadly, “got as little sleep as I did and you’re still fighting fit. Some guys have all the luck.”  
That earns a lopsided smile to the warm, broad mouth sporting no hints of the love bites left over the previous night. “Yeah. I got you. Pretty lucky I’d say.”

“And you go and gotta spoil it with that.” Dramatically sighing, he sits flat on a warped bench subject to the visits of countless pigeons and doves roosting in the eaves. At least that corner is relatively clean of their attentions.   
Steve approaches, stooping to pick up their bags.

“You complaining?”

“No, but I’m nursing some bruises in interesting places and you’re planning to hike ten kilometers overland, aren’t you?’  
“Six or seven, depending on the state of the footbridge,” Steve begins and catches himself, that absent-minded response going all awry.

In spite of himself, Bucky laughs and remembers why laughing is never a good idea with strained internal muscles and a tightness at the core. All Steve’s fault, all that.

He reaches his hands out anyway, suddenly covetous of the man in the plain dark pants and the tough jacket, the spangled blue and white lines bright in the barn. “You know something, Steve?”

He comes to Bucky and takes his hands, reeled through. “What’s that?”

“You’re about as subtle as a hand grenade in a barrel of oatmeal,” Bucky pronounces with a straight face, only to watch Steve startle and choke on a laugh that bubbles in his throat.   
The laughter sounds so good even if they haven’t got time, waiting on a mission, in the center of occupied territory. Call danger a spice, the best kind of seasoning to any affection. Knowing your death could lie around the corner inflates the fleeting glimpses of immortality, heightening the need to live on in a legacy nigh forever.

His tongue traces over his lips and Steve halts at that, caught by the uncertainty of a newly minted relationship. The fixed look at his mouth dispels any notions of disinterest, though, and Bucky smiles inwardly. Outwardly, he hesitates upon the bench.

“I figured honesty was the best possibility.” Steve has no ego in this race, one of his best qualities.

“So you could just say ‘I wanna sleep with you again, Bucky.’”

A bridge too far and they fall once more back into the modest country where the boldest hero in American forces since the Marquis de Lafayette -- and yes, he was French -- drops his eyes and makes some half-hearted excuse. “Figured sleep would be good and…”

Bucky sighs and leaps up from the bench, making it three steps before he can seize the jacket that really ought to be covered up by a leather coat, the very thing Steve won’t even hear of. He has to rise off his heels to equalize their height and presses his mouth to that beautiful pair of red lips, so full they really could belong to a woman.

That kiss wipes the complaints right off the board. Catching Steve by surprise can be difficult, and his startled murmur whispered into the cradle of Bucky’s mouth adds another tally to preen over later. Yet he takes no time at all to confirm the place in the world.

His arms wrap Bucky up, leaving no doubt whatsoever of their intentions. Whatever hesitation lingered before fades away, especially as the brunet slides his hand up along the front of the padded jacket to tug at the secret clasps and zippers. Hard to manage within the tight press of their chests, but he is poetry in motion when inspired and soon enough, the guards surrender to his efforts.

Beneath Steve wears a thin, collared shirt that still smells of the acrid soap they laundered their clothes in what feels like four villages back. That proves a more formidable barrier but Bucky delves a hand under the hem and strokes up over the pronounced musculature carved like one a Roman statue standing larger than life in the Met.

It still catches his breath to feel the firmness under his palm. Smooth flesh yields barely at all to a push, and sometimes he wants nothing more than to sculpt the masterpiece with his thumbs until Steve’s breathing hitches a bit ragged around the edges. He delves high rather than low.

“This what you wanted?” he murmurs into Steve’s shoulder.

“You’re going to feel this later.” A last gasp protest comes a bit late between kisses, their mouths warm and eager on one another.

“Don’t disparage my choices.”

That chastens Steve such that Bucky can’t help but to offer the consolation of his tongue, pressing softly against those strong teeth until they part. Delving deep satisfies the hollow ache in his stomach, and he groans in gratitude when the taller man bends his head, bearing down hard.

Thick fingers gather through the loose chestnut curls trimmed into a facsimile of military standards, grooving over Bucky’s scalp. Those big hands dwarf his skull and cover a wide span, fingers drilling into his nape until they unlock all the tension. Popping locks undo the pent-up worry that wartime conditions bring, every thought of spectral farmers ghosting through the ruins of their villages banished for a second.

Then and there, Bucky _must_ touch this man who holds his heart, greedy for the touch of skin on skin. He holds the flame against the dark shadows thrown by the Axis powers, and maybe this truly is some kind of sin -- keeping Captain America from fighting by the sides of good men.

Do they begrudge him a moment of stolen happiness now and then? Bucky will never ask, not his place, nor can he bear that truth when he pushes away the idea of greed.

The Lord in His kindness, if there is any divine power out there, offers those few moments of grace among the horrors. He never hesitates to strip his jacket open, squirming his arms out, but Steve’s embrace pins the limbs to his sides.

Wriggling gets him nowhere except more disheveled and he cannot wait, hard as steel, rubbing his groin against the breadth of the thigh presented. Somehow Steve pushes his leg between his without either of them losing balance and that broad incline gives him exactly what he needs, a place to focus his carnal attentions by rocking his hips with increasing speed.

A poor facsimile for being taken or burying himself to the hilt in yielding heat, but the friction gathering along the straining length of his shaft delivers a different kind of pleasure to his aching senses. He teases himself while grinding into his lover, deciding to play out that as long as he can as they resume their kiss.

His tongue plunders the depth of Steve’s mouth, a sass against his arms being pinned to his sides. A flex of the elbow and then a handful of his hair pulls his head back, exposing his throat in a long white line. He hasn’t shaved well for the day -- hard without a mirror, and razors are in short supply like everything else in France, restricted by Nazi supply lines.

Steve hardly cares, descending like a man on the first ripe apple of the autumn. His teeth score a line down the stiff column of muscle supporting Bucky’s shoulder, and when pink scrapes rise, his tongue responds with unspoken apology. The heat of his lips can leave the best of love marks and bites, purple blotches that generally lead to Sergeant Barnes’ unfounded reputation as a womanizer.

“You taste good,” murmurs the blond, and sends him soaring.

Pressure gliding over his cock gives only so much relief, and he bears down, sliding up and down that supportive leg until it retreats. He groans only to find himself turned, spun around as though he weighs nothing. Given he’s personally seen Steve bench press a motorcycle loaded by four women in both hands, he hardly counts for a heavy burden.

Bucky nonetheless cries out when he ends up bent over the bench, his shoulders pushed down until they practically touch the ground. Not that the leverage of the seat gives any great height, particularly when it comes to the difference between Barnes stooped over with his buttocks in the air and the beltline that Steve hastily opens up.

Certain and firm flicks of his wrist strip the tongue from the metal buckle, and when Bucky looks back, he gets a quick, gentle tap to his uplifted cheek.

“Face forward, Sergeant.”

Steve uses that indescribably firm tone of a commander and Bucky, fully capable of unleashing such himself, groans. The material straining around his erection should be tearing in two, the blunt, heavy fullness of his cock swaying between his spread legs freely.

He gets none of that, grinding openly against the bench in his eagerness. Neither is his captain, his best friend, slow about opening his trousers and easing them back so he can work his underwear low. They haven’t practiced this enough to be speedy and graceful about stripping, as much driven by the intense need to get laid -- _no, fuck, make love, have sex, whatever they wanna call it_ \-- as avoid attention doing it.

Shame still teases at the edges of the conscious, pricking the red haze of lust without deflating the wild roll of desire much.

Bucky cries out when Steve wordlessly puts his hands to the waistband of his khaki pants and pulls. An arm snakes past his hip and cups his hard shaft, nothing more and less. He bucks anyways, rolling his cock into the splayed fingers that cradle him, rubbing Steve’s knuckles firmly into the bench with a knock.

“You’re gonna be the death of me,” he groans, and arches his back sharply when Steve pulls his hair.

“Trying to get it rough?” Steve asks.

“You noticed.”

A bit of fumbling follows suit as the blond works open his pants, getting the zipper snagged and finally giving up to yank them back. Boxers go with the pants shoved down Bucky’s thighs -- no tighty whities for him -- and the cool air of the barn laps at his smoldering ass and tightly tucked sack.

Then come Steve’s fingers to stroke gently along the same curve, reverent as if he’s made of porcelain, totally the opposite of the rough manhandling before.

He could shout for frustration, but why interrupt their morning by bringing worried farmers creeping up on them?

“Patience, Buck.” Like he knows the reeling in Bucky’s mind, the blond grips his backside tighty in one hand, kneading out the tension as firmly as he dares.

With the other, Steve has to negotiate peeling open a condom. Where he got that, no telling, nor the little packet of oil probably pilfered from a pharmacy -- chemist, or whatever they call them -- for a first aid kit. That’s what Bucky tells himself as he hears the package tear open and then cool, slick fingers rubbing over his puckered hole.

“Sorry it’s cold,” Steve whispers.

“Don’t be.” He loves the sensation of the chill against his burning skin, the way slickness wreaths the petite starburst, painted in by a broad finger.

Unlike Captain Rogers, upright and American as apple pie, Bucky has dared to toy with his ring in the night and even let a French brunette with a spitfire grin slide her finger into him as she sucked him off. Memories of that apartment explode into sharp relief, cream walls and his fists clenched in her floral patterned quilt not a whole lot different than Steve gently negotiating thrusting his own digit through the tight band of ring.

Bucky moans. It hurts and feels good all the same and he grips the bench, teetering forward almost onto his shoulder with his face near the old wooden boards.

“That’s it, open up for me.”

Encouragement like that sears his soul.

He should be ashamed, afraid of burning in hell, for homoerotic fantasies suggest a sick mind, the doctors say. That sort of unhealthy fixation is a mental illness to be treated harshly, but he knows the truth from the steadying hand around his hip and the blaze of his anal ring giving for Steve’s finger this is nothing other than sublime.

The slow thrusts don’t go deep or fast, mostly focused on filling in his little pucker. He slides over the coated knuckle again and again, spread out to take Steve’s finger. Not enough but as he tries to ask for more, the grip on his hip tightens.

“Please, Steve…”

“You’ll get what I give you.”

This authoritative mood is new and utterly thrilling, stunning, like biting into a fresh strawberry or awakening to the smell of fresh coffee in the percolator. He groans as the downward angle finds that hidden spot, sliding past, and his hips involuntarily lift as he slides back to hilt Steve’s index finger.

No apologies, but the push slides him down to the floor as the bench bites into his stomach. He fully bends over it, a naughty altar boy praying to God, and _there’s_ an image to exploit later if only --

Thoughts incinerate to the caress of wet fingers gliding down his perineum and fondling his balls, rubbing them from side to side with the finger still buried good and deep. Steve prods at his prostate repeatedly and his cock spits out a stream of clear precum onto the floor, gleaming among the straw.

Bucky pants and tries to make no sound but impossible as he’s fondled inside and out, his nerves singing a high-pitched, shattering glass aria in his skull. He starts to utter broken little cries as one finger slowly withdraws and two slide in, scissored, Steve’s favourite way to make him open a little more. The movements are rougher and faster than before, a sign of patience melting away.

He wants to push back and rise but a knee pressed to the bench marks Steve getting into place, and _oh God, Steve’s going to mount him_ , some new position they’ve never tried.

Of course he visualizes it, how his exposed ass looks high in the air and how Steve has to crouch a little to line up that sweet, thick cock to his small rosette.

Not long waiting there, for Steve steadies him with one hand and guides his condom wrapped cock with the other to the little, pink hole still contracting after fingers slide out. No chance now that he has to take something big, bigger than belief, eye-watering good.

Thankfully Steve never rushes. If anything he goes too slow. Not really something he can be blamed for, being cautious and mindful of Bucky’s wellbeing given their very, very different abilities and sizes.

Still, it never helps the situation to grumble. He looks to the side, trying to make eye contact. 

“Just thrust into me already.”

“I’ll hurt you,” Steve answers through gritted teeth, and oh, that’s a good sign as he rubs his crown around the quivering pucker.

“Do it.” Bucky sucks in his breath. “Please.”

“You’ll…”

They fucked the night before so it’s hardly like the pink ring is swollen closed, and even if it were a small part of his mind craves the sensation of what Steve sliding in to reclaim the territory might feel like, something to be fantasized about later.

Slow and steadily, though, Steve pushes down on his besieged ring and, yes, it burns and it hurts to let him in even exhaling and pushing down, just like he tried to take in those two big fingers. Nothing totally different about blowing his ring open for the huge flared bell that dwarfs his hole, but his hole is a miracle and takes it, sliding tight as a glove over Steve’s cock and inching upwards along the shaft that flares out after the narrowing at the neck.

Patience mastered long ago, Steve gently pushes him back and forth to ease the entry, all he can do as a salve. Thumb stroking around the flushed red ring dilated so far and wide it no longer really crinkles helps to soothe, even though Bucky gasps for breath and clutches at the floor, broken down to companionable silence as he gets oh so slowly buggered.

Reamed.

Words that would be shocking in private company mirror his mood now, and Steve’s, because neither of them can hold back once he gets past the halfway point.

Leaning in hard brings Steve to rest against his toned buttocks and pulling back takes all the oxygen out of Bucky’s lungs, but not for long. Not for long at all, the strokes beginning slowly, drilling deep enough to displace him from the bench.

Back, forth. The first rounds are the slowest, gathering steam, a locomotive thundering down the slope of a mountain onto the plains. Steve has control of himself, mastering those long, deep strokes that slap their balls together and collide with his ass. He lurches forward only a little, both hands restricting his travel to being mostly nailed -- fucked, oh God yes -- in place.

Ten minutes of this leaves him clawing at the rough wood, heedless of splinters, dribbling oil out of his red hole. Steve tries not to make a sound but fails about halfway through, leaning over him and murmuring encouragement.

“Yeah, baby, that’s it. You’re tight, you’re so tight around me.”

"Steve!"

"That's it. Let me get deep. Let me do the work."

He can’t help but try to squeeze around the tree trunk thickness in his hole, the weak twinges forcing Steve to throw his head back and bludgeon through the token resistance like he achieved any kind of actual defense. After that, the jabbing thrusts concentrate right on his prostate and Bucky can’t give any resistance but writhing.

A fist pressed to his lips he bites, and then he covers his mouth with his hand to avoid the lewd noises ripped out of him. Steve keeps up the steady pressure only to feel the way Bucky’s tight ring milks him and the velvety walls clench down. He has only the barest idea of what he hits except every time he does, the electric shock travels up and down the brunet’s rectum and stretches his hole thin, squeezing and trembling.

Bucky can’t last and he doesn’t, fisting his own cock in a rapid flutter timed to the pounding tempo. They both match one another, leading one another along, and the dual stimulus throws the soldier right over the edge. His pearly cum sprays onto the ground and over his hand, fingers dripping.

Steve halts only for a second, and only that, watching how the tight, perspiring body of his best friend arches in profound ecstasy, how he has a death grip on a cock too big for comfort wedged up his back hole.

He lasts a few strokes after that, plunging in as deep as he can go, ramming Bucky, jackhammering his tribute until his cock spits out its load into the condom.

The stirring stillness that gathers behind him signals Steve’s release, and Bucky plaintively groans, denied the seed leaking out from his puffy hole. He hates the withdrawal, but Steve stays tied to him for a few more minutes until he softens up a little, enough to pull out without too much discomfort.

“Soon,” Steve kisses his back, helping him upright.   
  
“Still don’t see why you need that condom.”   
  
“We can’t get caught.” Sorrow written over his face tells a mutual truth, a burning need, even as Steve strokes his quivering hole. He adds his own fingers for the need to feel how blown he is, how much the roughness will close him up.

“But I don’t care. I love you.”

Steve’s eyes warm as his expression softens. “I know, Buck. But until this war is over, we gotta be careful.”

“You know when we get back,” he mutters, sliding back into his boxers and his trousers, “we’re gonna get a cabin upstate. Somewhere quiet. And you’re gonna finally let loose in me so I can feel it properly.”

The captain licks his lips. Talking like this always makes him blush. “I’d like that.”

“Damn well you better. I expect to feel like it’s sloshing around inside me when I walk.”

Steve’s eyes are wide and his body shaking. Oh, that hit a nerve. “Buck.”

“And you too.” He pulls up his pants sharply, groaning at the roughness on his hole. Feels so good, stings a bit too much. “I’m going to have _you_ and cum in your ass, Steve. I swear, if it kills me, I’m not letting you die a virgin.”

“I’m hardly gonna die, Barnes.”

“Yeah, but you still don’t give. That’s gonna change.” Bucky crosses his heart and then his lips, and Steve swats his hand away.

“Stop. I know. I wanna. But properly, Bucky, with a bed and you getting your fireplace, all of it.”

Bucky halts long enough to walk over, wobbly and sore, and kisses Steve on the cheek, then warmly on the mouth. “Promise?”

“Promise.”


	3. Guilt By Association

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shaken out of an erotic memory, Bucky awakens to the awful revelation of what happened in New York.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter goes heavy on emotions and a smattering of angst and despair on Bucky's part. As ever, I devour comments and kudos like a child loves candy, so please feel free to offer either if you are inclined. <3

Everything hurts. His toes feel permanently curled to the pads of his feet by plasma nails, driven deep into the stinging flesh. Rigid muscles refuse to unclench, frozen at the tightest knots possible, like back when he was a kid and the other athletes on the football team tried to see who could stay crunched up the hardest, the longest.

If he had the strength to roll to his side, he might, but even that much evades him. Bucky blinks into the dull darkness around him, making even the definition of walls and doors or beds hard to measure.

At least he isn’t seeing bars. That much is a comfort, but tells him alarmingly little about his surroundings. A prison cell or an oubliette would be suitable, given the fragmented mosaic of actions picked piecemeal from the wreckage of the past hour -- hours?

His heart lurches in his chest at memory of the gun in his hand, the quick shots in the air, the bark of the gun's retort and everything focused on ripping his best friend’s life away.

 _Was that really me?_ No. No, it couldn't be. Bucky clutches his hands against the side of his head, fingers buried in his hair. His skull aches, hollow inside, pressed by the vibranium laced palm that can crush bone as easily as eggshell.

Once upon a time, he told Steve he remembers everything. The blessing of oblivion in the cryochambers isn't a lie. He remembers every victim, shreds of clear memory stripped of emotional context. He can replay the moment Captain America stumbled and collapsed, hitting the ground in a heap. 

No effort at all to recall those troubled blue eyes looking up in disbelief, choked hope taken under by a wave of pain. Pain he caused, as the violent death dealer in HYDRA's arsenal.

They've awakened something out of him that slips back into abeyance, and no longer shrouds him in the pristine cold of a killer's focus. In some ways, it's worse, impossibly worse.

Bucky despises the moments when control slips away, and he falls out from the twilit calm in his mind.   _A few words and no more me._

He rocks back and forth over his knees, finding no relief even in the vestige of tears. Shock, a clinical part of his mind detached from the outright horror suggests. No rage comes climbing out to save him in a spill. He has to move.

 _Move now_. If he doesn't move, the crushing weight is going to kill him.

Sick terror leaves him slowly convulsing as his arms wrap around his midsection. Chattering grief forces its way out from whatever dark hole of his psyche it waited in, a serpent winding across the scoured desert of his mind, tasting his misery and emboldened to punch through every haphazard excuse flung up in its wake.

He wasn’t in control. He wasn’t _Bucky_ then. Bucky would never hurt Steve, even now recoiled from the idea he might have knowingly took aim.

_Bucky wouldn't kill Steve. Not ever. But I'm not Bucky. That wasn't Bucky._

Who is the monster? The fragmented part of his psyche that goes under whenever danger rears, or the Winter Soldier -- killer formed of ice and duty -- crunching over the spilled glass of the man he used to be? Which is _he?_ A question he doesn’t know the answer to.

He thought he did. But cordite and a pinpoint strike, the pop of gunfire and the spreading poppy blossom on Steve’s white and blue uniform haunt his waking memories. He is pretending to pull himself back together to hide the truth from his friends and himself.

It might be better to find the gun and put the barrel in his mouth, ending all the suffering left in his wake.

 _Steve_.

"No. No, not Steve..."

A broken sob rips acidic lines up his throat, echoing around the cavernous space in his mouth. He can’t cry, his eyes dry and sandpapered by pushing his face into a sheet, but the guttural scream comes out in trickles, gaining strength the more his emotions lost their hold on sanity.

He howls as loud as his lungs allow until the vigorous force of sound tearing out from him abuses his larynx. Every swallow hurts like he tried gargling with a blackberry cane. Serves him right. He deserves this. Breaking his voice is not nearly enough grief. Tearing his hair and piling ashes on his head is just a start of the mourning, and he stares through dim eyes for something, anything to invite the jolts of pain deserved.

Anything less and he’ll simply heal, back to square one.

 _Shooting Steve_. No turning back from that, no hint of a refuge in some Eastern European country or a safehouse from his days on the run where he can lay low until the trouble passes. No way to evade the spectre he unleashed in a moment of carelessness. Fear never enters the equation. He cannot run away from himself, no chance of that at all.

The universe stands by piteously at the fate of men. Stars watch on, uncaring, when fools fall beneath fortune’s crushing wheel or diverge from a safe course into treacherous territory. He despises the darkness as much as himself -- Winter loves the darkness, as much as that sorry automaton can love anything, stripped of even basic human compassion and dignity, shredded in the whirlwind of practice down to the core seed of humanity in a poisoned field.p 

He has so many questions as he struggles to find his bearings, pushing himself up off the floor. Somewhere a wall waits, and following the wall will eventually lead him to a door or a window. Bucky runs on autopilot, that singular goal crystallising in his mind alongside fresh grief and pain that cut worse than bullets and shrapnel ever have.

Why didn’t Natasha shoot him? All the Avengers positioned to bring him down held their hand, much to their assured misery now. They had the power to stop him and no one halted him.

 _Better dead than alive to regret_. He wants to die more than anything now, knowing he put the bullets in Captain America. Uncertain of his fate, the worst outcome leaves Bucky sure he isn’t ready to go on in a world without Steve in it.

All the words try to escape at once, reduced to a mush of howling lamentations better suited for a shot dog than a man. He goes to his knees, face buried in his hands.

* * *

 

 

The sound yanks Thor out of his brooding pacing outside, the door into the chamber flung open, and with it all the lights erupting into a warm golden sheen. Lamps reveal the mortal curled up on himself, gasping and pouring out the flood of emotions with all the visceral force he can muster.

“Stop.”

The rasping shout gets nowhere, hardly stopping Bucky from falling into the throes of despair. He closes in to stop the man and takes a punch square to the stomach, blocking the next desperate scrabble against his forearm.

Thor repeats himself: “Stop! Barnes, cease!”

For all the booming thunder in his voice, that seems to barely faze the staggering brunet seeking an outlet, escape in every sense of the world. He folds Bucky’s hands together and pins them against his chest, forcing the mortal to lie flat to the side of the bed.

Not for lack of trying, Bucky is forced still. He kicks and twists in Thor's grip. Insensate to his stormy emotions, he fails to even recognize what holds him, at first. It might as well be the metal cuffs restraining him in Zola's operating theatre or the vicious magnetic clamps fit to bind even a supersoldier against his will. The metallic cuffs refuse to break.

"Let me go," he chatters out, building to another shriek of rage. "Let me out!" 

Lamellar rise and whine as the gyros in his prosthetic arm kick into force, giving the maximum amount of strength they can. Charged by absorbed force, the vibranium comes alight in a flash of gold sigils traced along the matte finish.

Rarely does the Asgardian ever bring to bear his monstrous strength, ever restrained where he could do great harm. Thor applies himself, shoving against the attempt to shove him off.

He stares at those glimmering marks, a network of living amber light not altogether different from his people's own artistry. Sigils mean sorcery and he's learned enough from Loki to know better. "What enchantment is this?"

Exerting himself more fully now, he pushes Bucky flat to avoid another wild punch. Thrust down into the sheets, Bucky snarls and shifts, pounding his fist into the bed.

Stored energy explodes out of him in a kinetic wave, flinging away the pillows and stripping Thor of his loose cape, tearing it straight off his pauldrons. It smashes against the wall even as he is lifted into the air, and dropped back down again. 

 _That_ hasn't happened in a good long time and certainly not among the likes of the Avengers, short of the Hulk. He stares for just a moment, eyes swirling a fragmented luminous blue of the maelstrom. 

"Barnes!" he shouts, and the room rattles again with the force of his words. 

For a moment they hang in space, the god of thunder reaching out and the assassin rolling into a crouch, face tear-streaked and clouded by dark emotion. His teeth curl back in a snarl.

He's a man who courts death and almost seems to welcome the threat, his fingers steepled and arm flung back. Bucky looks ready to launch himself into Thor’s midsection, as foolish as that might be. Thought is past him in despair.

A short distance as he hurls himself across the bedroom, launching into a tight execution of kicks and punches at full force. Thor blocks one and all glimmers of good humour in the bluff face vanish.

Snapping his wrist, Thor grabs Bucky by the shoulder and takes the flurry of punches to his armoured stomach, forcing the mortal back down. The move to pin him is frankly unfair, given he's used it on the Hulk a time or two.

"Stop it," he grits out through his teeth. "Hela's breath, stop. Can you not see I mean you no harm?"

Fresh agony drowns the lupine howling that wants to rip out of him. Bucky feels the grind of his joints, the metal filaments strung through his muscles and the straining anchor points tearing at the scar tissue. Fresh hurt joins the smoldering ache, and his red-rimmed eyes narrow at the visceral sensation of bones grinding, cartilage popping.

Thor remains a steadfast presence beside the bed, grappling with him the way a grown man confines an injured animal.

The concept of his strength rarely strikes home, but reducing Bucky to a hissing wet cat with no great effort humbles him even worse, briefly slicing his fugue in twain.

“What have I done? How could I do that to him?” Hoarse condemnation spat out demand an answer, eroded by grief.

"You were not yourself. But now you seem reasonable, you should know," Thor says.

Eyes bluer than any summer sky direct a look that washes over him, carrying its own palpable weight. Thor wears that distant expression, the one he gets when the humour leaves and difficult decisions lie ahead. Mead or beer? Nothing so trivial, not now.

Bucky understands.

The Avengers slaying one of their own is a bridge too far, especially in the aftermath of Steve’s insistence they do not kill. But Thor is the outlier, the unpredictable variable. Removed from New York -- hell, removed from _Earth_ \-- he no longer has to abide by confining ethics, free to pursue the law as he sees fit. In fact, fully within his right to as a sovereign of some floating city in the sky.

“He's gone. I get it. This is the neat way of cleaning up loose ends.” Nothing more than a whisper croaks out from him, deflating his proud height. The last flame extinguishes under fate’s cold fingers. What has he done? _What’s left now?_

The fight leaves Bucky. He goes prostrate, his chest heaving, shoulders shaking at the force of his wheezing breaths. The tears finally start to well up.

“Barnes…” Thor leaves a pregnant pause, trying to find the words. So easy in grief to interpret that all wrong.

Bucky does his best to swallow the choking sob.

“I’m sorry,” he pushes the words out in the cracked whisper, all he has left. The sound spills out and loses its strength as soon as he turns his head down, wet linens stained by the salt stricken drops leaking out from under his lashes.

The heavy weight of the hand leaves his back and he stiffens, prepared for the certain end to follow. He pushes himself up slowly to his knees, willing to give no less. Never die on your stomach when you can give up on your knees, at least a scrap of honour.

Honourless bastard that he is, Bucky grits his teeth. _I can do this much right_.

How they conduct justice in Asgard is still a mystery to him, as unbelievable as the golden thunder god himself is if anyone ever really stops to think about it.

Thor startles when the battered, bruised man rises to all fours and then pushes himself back, stiff and ancient, his spinal cord standing out against the loose shirt covering him.

“What are you doing? It’s unwise to move much. You are quite injured.”

“Just do it,” Bucky says.

He refuses to meet Thor's eyes, struggling for a modicum of composure when every raw, steel-bright nerve screams to run and escape. Get free and breathe another day. Somewhere deep inside the shadow of the Winter Soldier stirs.

It costs him everything to whisper, “Quickly.”

Thor stares unblinking, unmoved. All the years spent on Midgard and mortals still find ways to surprise or startle him, a man with millennia of experience dealing with nigh near every combat experience under the sun.

What to make of this haggard youth bending his head to bare his neck through the fall of his messed hair and clenching his fists in an effort of control? He seems to expect a sword blow at any moment.  

“Do what? You should be resting, not--

Bucky cuts him off. “I know you’re the executioner. I deserve this. I won't fight you.” His teeth start to chatter, and his jaw bulges when he clenches down to cease the inane noise. Reduced to whisper, he shuts his eyes. “I killed him.”

The long silence follows and he swears he hears the voluptuous whistle of the block-headed hammer parting the air, the sound it’d make moments before its angled side collides behind the ear like a cow taking a strike to the soft spot atop the skull.

A whoosh comes, all right, blown out through Thor's flaring nostrils. His armour creaks when he redistributes his weight, shifting from foot to foot. “Know you nothing of what happened? He's not dead. Captain America may be Injured greatly, yes, but nothing he cannot heal from.”

“What?”

Bucky hears himself from miles past the room, wherever they are, disassociated from the burned, stricken body teetering forward to collapse on the bed at any moment. He reached out to catch himself against the headboard, his metallic fingers imprinting deep marks across the hard exotic wood.

Hope is a hazy, terrifying thing that blooms in his chest. He can't pull breath fast enough to satisfy the lightheaded rush robbing him of sense.

“The bullets hit vital spots. He’d bleed out too fast to heal. I killed him,” he says.

Thor grasps his shoulder and shakes him lightly, rattling Bucky’s teeth and throwing his hair in a wild cloud.

"Steve Rogers is alive." The god stares at him, as though to fix some kind of explanation.

"I saw him die!" 

“You saw him fall, yes, but not die." Thor’s tone leaves little doubt. "Since you won't listen to me, you shall have to see for yourself.”

Silence drops between them as clean as an axe. 

 _See him_. See Steve laid up somewhere, wrapped in bandages and clinging to life. Or worse, tucked into a bed as the disappointment clouds his face, and he realizes the wish he nurtured for months is nothing better than a lie. Mourning the death of his best friend, seeing him replaced by a psychotic monster, is surely as bad as death.

“I can't. After what I did--” Bucky starts.

He nearly bites his tongue, going wild-eyed. Some shard of ice slips up from the abyss, an echo for the same monster that jarred awake in the street. He has to get out of here and find somewhere far away, far from the men and women who put their trust in him.

He readies to bolt, prepared to smash through the wall if he has to. The charge doesn't exactly take the imposing blond off guard, but close enough to give him a running head start. That's all he needs.

Thor steps in his way and seizes him bodily, wrenching him up off his feet when they both collide. For a moment, he swears the god of thunder will hurl him into the corner.

If there was any doubt he is the trueborn prince of Asgard, Thor Odinson banishes that notion straight away.

"You  _will_ see Steve Rogers," he snaps. Bucky snarls right back. "He is like a brother to you. Believe me when I say you will regret turning your back in his hour of need." 

“Steve deserved better than what I did.” Tears run freely down his face. The naked terror must be written plainly on his tight expression. Everything burns in anguish and fear. 

"Wounded the one person you cared most for? Aye, I've suffered that. Loki..." Thor sets his jaw. "For all his faults, I would tear apart the sky for him. You will not run away. He is a good man, he  _will_ come for you."

Bucky has only stories of the conflict between the two powers, recounted over drinks whenever Thor is very definitely out of earshot. To hear Clint or Natasha tell it, Loki is nothing more than a Machiavellian schemer, unworthy of licking a boot. But his brother defends him, even champions the trickster prince. They've laughed in the past and shaken their heads.

For once in his life, Bucky  _gets_ why someone puts up with a blackguard making a mess of everything. He so desperately wants to erase the last day and be pristine once more in Steve's eyes.

"It would be better for everyone if..."

"Steve Rogers is not everyone," Thor says.

Truth as bald as it can be. What's left to do other than face his fate? The tilt of his head reveals his haggard expression, the torment carving out hollow lines. He nods, and Thor sets him back on his feet, leaving him to his own devices to stand. 

From here, everything changes. Bucky glances to the door, then back to Thor. "I do this, and I need some kind of guarantee you'll watch. In case..." His voice cracks, swallowed. "If I try to hurt him."

Thor strikes his vambrace to his chestplate. "I'll see no harm comes to you or Captain America."

"Yeah. About that." His metal arm glitters and smoothly creaks. How much of that lightning ended up dancing through the circuitry designed to absorb immense quantities of energy? He can't even imagine. "You gonna hit me with a lightning bolt again?" 

Thor gestures at the door. "Worry about making the proper apology. He's waiting for you out there."

No time like the present. With a draining sigh, Bucky walks ahead of the Asgardian, pushing open the door onto the burning sunlight illuminating a vast chamber.

And he knows he's not on Asgard, not by a long shot. No, this is something incredibly worse.

He's  _home_.

 


	4. Making Amends For a Broken Heart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No sin is so great that a virtuous man cannot forgive it. Bucky may not believe that, but his friends do. All the feels!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> James Buchanan Barnes is the favourite cat toy of the Fates. For once he deserves a little help and luck. Thanks for staying with this story, and the home stretch gives the power of forgiveness. If you feel inclined to leave comments or kudos, thank you! ~<3

The flesh is willing but the mind is weak. Bucky thinks nothing of stepping out from cover to plow his fist into five assailants or crossing a mined wheat field for cover. But he can’t force himself to walk the short distance into a sun-drenched bedroom.

Blinds bump in the window frame, a light breeze slipping through the gaps in the wooden slats. With it come the familiar smell of the city street: greenery, the hint of fumes, and a thicker patina of the Thai restaurant down the corner. Smells that in every way signal home to his broken mind, as much as the large bed spells safety and comfort.

It should. But he is cornered by the immensity of the situation, one his own missteps create. In the bed lies the prostrate form of America’s first and best known hero.

The sheets swaddle the supine body as much as a scaffold of neat white bandages. Wrappings scale the gently rising and falling torso to the armpits, failing to conceal the discolouration bruising Steve’s shoulder a spectacular shade of plums and lilacs like some Pucci dress for the spring season.

 _He’s still asleep. He’s still breathing_.

Bucky licks his cracked lips, tasting salt. He clenches his fists at his side and eases his fingers open, forcing them slack. A shaky breath wends through his airway, spackled by an incipient dread and the bright twin, hope.

The dazzle of sunshine dances around the dusty blond hair, diffused into a halo, softening the hard edges of plumped pillows and the man lying upon them. A perfect vision if one discounts the gentleman in the corner, sunken into a battered old chair with no business in a modern New York apartment -- especially not one in the fancy tower paid for by Stark funds.

Lumpy butterscotch suede melts around the man holding vigil, elbows on the oft-repaired chair arm, a book in hand.

A blush of heat bursts over Bucky’s face, staining his skin pink. The spreading prickle trails down his throat to his Adam’s apple and rises to his cheeks. Awkwardly swallowing, he concentrates on the task he mastered shortly after his first year, setting one foot in front of the other, not dampening the sound of boots on floorboards.

Sam looks up at the first creak, those warm brown eyes clouded by a gamut of emotions. His brow smooths, face composed into acceptably taut lines. Concern grooves a deep channel over his knotted brows.

“Barnes,” he says, tinged in caution.

“Wilson.”

“I see Thor talked to you.”

“You could say that.”

Drawing up to a halt halfway into the bedroom, Bucky cases the windows in the space of a glance, measuring the closed bathroom door and a shadow beneath not corresponding to their sink unit or the shower door. Bifurcated darkness then. _Another person_.

He scrapes his hands over his hair while Sam watches his every move, dissecting him behind the mild exterior of a chaplain or a counselor.

“How is he?”

He can’t think of anything else worthy to ask. Right question. Sam nods and dog ears his page with his thumb, upsetting the spirits of librarians everywhere. Inwardly Bucky cringes at the mishandling.

“Let’s put it this way. He’ll be taking things light for the next two weeks.”

God help anyone trying to restrain Steve to any kind of light schedule. The embers flare to life from the dead recesses of his soul, almost enough to get a dim tip of a smile out of him.

“He’s going to be able to walk again?”

“Yeah. His prognosis is excellent thanks to some decisive work by Ms. Maximoff. The doctor praised her efforts. Turns out the extra study with him pays off.”

“The doctor?”

“Stephen Strange. Lives in the Village in the big fancy mansion. Turns out in addition to being a wizard without a pointy hat, he’s a fully accredited surgeon.”

“The things you learn. Huh. Wizards.” He dimly fabricates the necessary response while trying to assess Steve’s condition from the corner of his eye.

Sam drums his fingers against the flattened, worn caramel upholstery. “You can stop playing coy and check him out. I’ll only shoot you if you try to strangle him.”

“Aim for the legs.”

Knocked back into a rigid upright posture, Wilson’s neutral expression processes shock and then darkens around the corners. “Don’t joke about that, Barnes. Not with him in the room or not in the privacy of your own headspace. It’s not healthy for any of us on this team,” he says, perhaps more harshly than he intended. “Sorry. If you had any idea how much you mean to him…”

The pale look bores into the man, directed from the face hollowed by grief and loss. Hundreds of men wear the same expression, from Arlington to the war graves on the beaches of Normandy.

Death and sudden loss are universal experiences for soldiers.

“I shouldn’t be here.” Bucky gestures at the door, waving his hand weakly. The glove creaks. “Give him some space to recuperate.”

“Anyone ever tell you you’re stubborn as a mule?” Sam bites the inside of his cheek. “You thinking of going to hide in some cheap motel upstate? A seedy AirBNB room in Flushing Meadows?”  
  
Bucky stares at him, unblinking.

“Great. You haven’t even thought that far ahead, or you kept a hideyhole from your Soviet days. Ditch the idea, Bucky. You’re the first thing he asked for when he woke up.”

That statement is a knife to the guts. Knees turn to water, legs go rigid, and he sways on his feet a bit. His tongue feels pasted to the top of his palate, and unpeeking it nearly hurts.

“When?” Slowly, James raises his hand to rub his shoulder.

“Right after we brought him in.” Sam pushes himself up from the chair, moving in the brunet soldier’s path. “Look, he loves you. Nothing’s gonna change that. Sometimes you need to hear the truth from someone outside your head, and that’s me today. Cap would take a bullet for you without a second thought. He damn near disassembled SHIELD to pursue you, and stood up to every world body that wanted your head. Have a little faith in him, man. You look at this like it destroyed your relationship. It’s a setback, but not the end.”  
  
“You forgetting I _shot_ him?”

“No way. Fixing the trauma from HYDRA was never gonna happen overnight. I know that, Steve knows that. Everyone on the team knows. We have protocols to deal with that.”

“Protocols don’t change that here,” Bucky jerks his hand to the bed, “is my best friend, unconscious, with an exit wound in his back.”

Too loud. Too raw with emotion. Too seized by the unremitting pain blossoming in his chest, thick bands constricting his lungs, forcing out every ounce of breath.

A hand pushes his shoulder up when he starts to curl inwards on himself, metal arm braced against his abdomen.

“Hey. Breathe, let’s breathe. Focus on me, Barnes.” The soothing cadence of Sam’s voice betrays his background counseling veterans, never ebbing into anger. “Two seconds, hold that breath.”

Grief wants to crawl out through his ribs and tear up his windpipe, convulsive pangs. So much sorrow, so much horror, all alleviated by the slow flex of a foot under the sheet and a stirring to his right on the periphery of his vision.

It’s the most arresting sight in the whole damn world.

Steve propped up on his pillows, pushing his hand into the mattress for balance as he gets into a better position. The motion attracts the attention of Sam, too, and both men fix their focus on him.

“Well so much for surprises,” he says, a wry smile on his mouth.

“Steve, you should be resting--”

“I’ve rested plenty, Bucky--”

The cough interrupts them talking over one another, hastening down a slippery slope in hopes of being the first to the apologetic punch. Things don’t change much in seventy years, much less people.

Sam shakes his head, a muffled laugh on his lips.

“He’s all yours.”

Hard to say who he addresses, much less what and why. He quietly retreats from the bedside, a hasty retreat back to the door, unnoticed except in a dusty shadow vanishing into the sunlight.

For that long, long moment Bucky cannot decide whether to advance to throw his arms around Steve or flee into the corner, anywhere to get out of line of sight. Instincts pull hard on the flight response, but he curbs the sensation, all but stomping it down.

“I’m sorry.”  
  
No other words are appropriate, none can possibly envelop his thoughts.

“That wasn’t your fault.” Steve shakes his head. “I know how the programming works. You don’t have to say you are sorry for something that wasn’t your control, and wasn’t you.”

In a master stroke, he demolishes the conditioning buried in Bucky’s head and the responsibility eating him alive.

He wants to weep, but his eyes only burn, no hint of salty brine to wash away the flames. Those sounds of forgiveness nail him in place, neither advancing or retreating.

 _Not one step_. Stalin’s old maxim to the forces at Stalingrad in the war. They echo in the most perverse ways, all wrong for the situation, and so true.

Steve pulls the blanket around his hips, the fresh white bandages swaddling the warmth of his skin. He looks about with a bit of a sigh. “Throw me a t-shirt, will you?”  
  
It’s the most mundane of requests and the only solution is to chuckle hoarsely. He remembers the basics of walking in rigid, slow steps. Bucky moves on autopilot. First to the drawer, where he mauls the neat rows of precisely folded cotton shirts by pulling one out from the middle. A blaze of rusted heather will do just fine.

The offering he holds out, mute and stiff. Steve’s fingers caress his forearms and trail down his wrists in a lingering pass. As he pulls the shirt over his head, the taut musculature of his arms and chest captivate the brunet, draining all thoughts away.

“Better. A little closer to normal.” 

Normal, like normal people fear shootings from their mentally conditioned friends. Bucky drops his gaze to the ground, studying the grain of the hardwood floors.

He is still close enough to be in arm’s reach with some difficulty. The strain leaves Steve wincing, and he steps in closer to alleviate that, unwilling to see any pain here of all places. The bedroom should be a sanctuary away from violence and weighty cares.

“You’re supposed to be resting,” Bucky says.

“I got time to do that later. Right now, I’ve got something more important on my mind.”

Steve turns his face up, his fingers curled around Bucky’s. The broad pad of his thumb sweeps a rainbow along the back of the knuckles where the skin smooths. His touch is warm, vibrantly alive, so different from the clammy chill infused into Bucky’s hand.

Pale, washed out blue eyes leave the ground to shyly approach Steve’s face.

“You aren’t safe around me.” No way to give that a preamble. “In the fight, some goon spat out a trigger phrase I didn’t even know I had. Thought we wiped them out, but obviously that’s not the case, and who knows what else they got rattling around in there.”

“Give yourself some credit, you pulled that shot.”  
  
“No, I was gunning for you to fall.” Truth stripped of artifice sounds and tastes ugly. Bucky wants to spit the taste from his mouth.

Steve holds his hand, never ceasing to lightly trace hemispheres. He thinks in silence for a few moments, brow creased. “We have a few things to work on. It may take some time, but nothing we can’t overcome.”

“Sam said the same thing.”

“I take Sam’s advice in these kinds of matters. He tends to know what he’s talking about.”

“Months.” Bucky curls his fingers, capturing those broad, strong digits in his own. “Last time the process took months. I was practically doing exercises with Shuri every day.” He swallows his pride in a choking gulp. “No way I can be out there in the field doing that again or sticking around the apartment. Maybe I’ll go back to Wakanda if they’ll take me.”

“Yeah, maybe it takes months. Maybe years. You stay put here, there’s no need to go to Wakanda. You got any plans I need to know about?” He smiles.

Why does he radiate such a sense of calm? Steve is so sure of these things, so sure of _Bucky_. The bewilderment starts to flare, a cornered animal, his breathing rough and sawing.

The gentle caress to his hand remains steady, the fingers around his tightening their grip.

Bucky shuts his eyes. “As long as it takes. I want to be better. I want _us_ to be better.”

“Then it’s solved.”

He opens his eyes, there to see the clear smile gaze and smile of a man perfectly in command of his faculties. Facing a future scripted cleanly, clearly.

“What? Steve, you mind sharing this plan of yours? Starting to feel like you’ve got a grand holiday and I don’t even know where you’re taking me.”

“You’ve had help, but I’m missing from the equation up until now.” Steve rubs the back of his head, easing some prickle along his scalp. “You had my support, but it wasn’t undivided. We take the time to work out what’s going on with you, searching for any remaining commands or conditioning. No need to leave New York. Everyone who might help is either here or shouldn’t have any problem flying in, if you need them.”

Bucky bows his head, the sunlight too bright against his eyes.

“Captain America can’t just vanish to take care of a broken vet. You know that.”

“Yes, he can. Everyone gets a holiday at some point, or they ought to. Civilized countries do not work their employees into the ground without a break.” Opinions stir and rattle the cage, and he swallows the slow burning anger. Steve finds peace after a breath, pulling Bucky’s arm towards him. “I’ve been serving this country a long time. I think we can agree I am entitled to some time off.”

“You think our enemies are going to lay off because you had a break?”  
  
“We got plenty of good people to take care of that while I take care of you.” Just like that, he put a bow on a solution, dropped it under the Christmas tree, and lights up with a smile that would make denial not only rude but unimaginable.

Bucky pulls his hands away, turning from the bed. “You can’t do that.”

"Says who?”

“America needs you more than--”

“Than my best friend needs me?”

“Yes!” He’s shouting and tries to dial it back. “Yes, the world needs someone who doesn’t fall into political games or take their orders from a lobby group. The world needs someone who thinks about what’s right and good for everyone, not a select few. At the hour when things look impossibly dark and warped by these special interests wrapped up in self-absorbed plans, the one guy always there to lead the way by doing what’s good and right is _not_ a sacrifice I can take away for them.”

The wind leaves him and his shoulders slump, his palm pressed to his throbbing eye socket. A headache is coming on, if that were even possible around the serum’s influence. Not a half-bad tradeoff.

“Those are all good points,” Steve replies not much above a whisper. “They tell me right there why I have to do this.”

“Throw away everything for me?”  
  
“You’re a good man, Bucky, and you have a strong heart under there. Willing to sacrifice your own stable life so everyone else can have one. Sounds kinda familiar. I get to decide and yeah, I think you’re worth hanging up the shield until we can go out together, or I don’t go at all.”

The blond swings his legs slowly over the side of the bed, carefully rotating himself without much speed. The t-shirt drapes around his chest, and where the blanket parts he wears a pair of dark jogging pants.

Bucky struggles for words. What do you say when someone announces they are rescinding their privileges to heaven for you? What is there that possibly equals that sacrifice? There aren’t.

“I’m not that man.”

“Maybe not right now, but you can be. I see who you are, Buck, and what you fight against.” Steve wraps his arm around the other man’s shoulders and leans in against his back, pulling them together while being pulled into an embrace. “I’m with you to make something work. Captain America can take a sabbatical, a well-earned one I might add, so Steve Rogers can have a chance at living for a while.”

Bucky rests his chin against the broad forearm sloping over his shoulder, robbing its warmth and comfort. Almost afraid to move, in case he shatters something precious in the moment that he can never piece back together.

“I can’t ask this of you.”

“You haven’t. I’m offering.”

His heart cracks a little harder, the shudder rolling through him in waves. He hurts in places he hasn’t felt in a long, long time. “Why?”  
  
“Because I love you. Because you get a right to a life of your own making. I want to be there for you and beside you.” A kiss roughly grazes his cheek, the fierce nuzzle into the hollow under his jaw. “Whatever you have to face, you face with someone at your side.”

His eyes shut and his back bows, such a weight laid on it. Such an undeserved gift put into his hands. “They’re gonna resent me for taking you away twice over.”

Steve kisses his cheek again. ”I’ll deal with it. And you mean Tony.” The muffled chuckle is light and heat incarnate. “What matters is you and us.”

Us. Such a novel idea, of anyone linked to Bucky Barnes and his sordid deeds. He wants to cry and curl up on the bed and run through the streets. None of them are feasible.

He kisses Steve’s arm again. “I’ll try not to fail you.”

“I’ll try not to nag you.” Like Steve nags anyone, even in his worst, idealistic days. The rough laugh scuds an irreverent line, fading out with a bite. “What was that for?”

Bucky turns slightly, looking over his shoulder. “I figure I’m gonna be yelled at for wearing you out. Doctor’s orders and all that. I might as well get a few marks in.”

Golden brows arch.

“What, you don’t think I want to show my appreciation and love? Doesn’t sex heal everything?”

Of course that warrants a low, throaty laugh behind him. “I don’t recall that being one of its powers.” But Steve hasn’t said no, nor does he resist being gently walked backwards to the bed. His knees meet the mattress and buckle, dropping him onto the soft quilt.

Bucky knows this, even where everything else is uncertain. He cups Steve’s face and leans down to kiss him, mouth warm and yielding, beckoning for an answer. When it comes, firm and eager, that speaks more than anything else ever could.

It quells the voice in the back of his head under honeyed layers of love and awe. Fingers comb his hair back and pull him down, meeting the kiss with deeper fervour. Steve’s eyes are closed and the softest hum purring at the back of his throat travels along their lips.

He mounts the bed on one knee, pushing back the blond gently, urging him to lie outstretched. The t-shirt rasps against the bandages, defining the utmost need for care and consideration in a difficult traverse. Stroking his hands over shoulders and chest, Bucky is nothing if not reverent, a sculptor approaching a block of the finest marble.

What he plans to make out of the moment, he still doesn’t know, but the pistons firing more or less accurately in his mind direct him to a kind of worship that lovemaking is, when slow and intimate in the spring sunlight.

Those shorts are the least of his concerns. He chases the kiss as Steve moves up to rest against the pillows, falling back into the saga of blankets and sheets gathered around him. He looks up to Bucky, expression full of trust and serenity, mouth red from the kissing.

“I love you.”

No higher truth guides the brunet as he dips his head. For once, he’s got hope to cling to.


	5. Grace Notes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve shows that love will heal about anything. He exhibits no restraint in making good on a promise from 1943 to Bucky Barnes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for staying with me all the way to the end. This story ends on a gentler, hopeful note that sets the stage for other short stories in the series. I'm always open to constructive feedback and comments, so please feel free to leave your thoughts or kudos as you like. <3

This isn’t smart.

He knows in his bones the risk he runs disassembling Steve with every kiss. Thirty hours ago, a slug from his gun ripped a hole through Captain America’s side and nearly ended that white light of goodness. He spilled the blood of a good man on the street.

Traitorous fingers cannot help but trace their tender lines over the white gauze and thicker bandages mummifying Steve’s ribs and the exposed meat of his taut flanks.

 _No. Not a mummy._ The thought puts a shudder through Bucky Barnes, a supplicant at the altar of Captain America. He struggles for another mental picture.

Laid out on the large bed, the golden-haired man beams a lopsided smile. His mouth is bruised, not from the unfortunate friendly fire, but the last lingering kiss placed with timeless desperation.

“You gonna lean there all night, soldier?” Steve asks.

God, he loves that low burr and the slight rasp.

Bucky lowers himself, holding the wood headboard with his metal arm. The heavy bolts groan in their sockets, but he lowers himself with exquisite slowness until his mouth brushes against the softening pout waiting. They meet shyly, the way teenagers on their first date might kiss, sampling the proximity of their lips and the way hot breath cools at the change of temperature.

Every tingle is a gift from the gods, and good friends willing to set him right on the path.

His hair pushed back off their shoulders will not stay put, sliding along his cheekbone in a ragged chestnut wave. That doesn’t stop Steve from trying, nudging the curtain back against Bucky’s ears every time.

“You’re doing that just for an excuse to touch me, huh?”

“Wouldn’t know what you’re talking about.”

Caught in the act, Steve grins. He quenches the spark of energy with a long, slow kiss drinking the breath and taste of the man he loves -- the man the world respects and admires, for good reason. Sheets and blanket pull under his knee, forcing him to elongate his body suspended over Steve’s. Shoulders flex until they nearly meet at the navel.

The blond pushes his legs wider to accommodate the planted knee, giving somewhere convenient and comfortable to rest. Too late for Buck to protest, though he tries, reaching back to run his free hand along the bandaged slope of the waist. 

“You’re supposed to take it easy.” Admonishment comes by way of a kiss, the dull application of his teeth to appropriate the lower lip and tug lightly. “Doc said no heavy exertion, didn’t he?”

“Seems pretty hard with someone in my bed.”

Sass from Steve always carries a gentle side, and his free hands roam up and down Bucky’s chest, pushing away the shirt to get his palms flat and close to the heart. Fingers passing over the flat bud of the nipple gain a sharp intake of breath through clenched teeth; Bucky has always been sensitive there.

“Hard? Hadn’t noticed.” 

He cranes his head to look down between them for the irrefutable evidence tenting the sheet and the soft cotton jogging pants. Only the first stirrings yet, but they have a long way to go.

The first blush coming to the cheeks lends a sparkle to Steve’s blue eyes, one that needs thorough care to turn into a raging fire. All those lessons from the Boy Scouts as kids come back to assist in the oddest ways, and Bucky cups Steve’s cheek and he kisses him long and hard.

 _Sweet. So sweet_. Utterly perfect, the feel of their lips together. He dares to breach the divide between them with his tongue, brushing along the enamel rampart until Steve opens his mouth.

How can he resist delving deep then? The strain on his shoulder burns as the internal servos whine in the metal carapace. Plates lift and flatten to accommodate the strain of dipping down so low.

Steve uses that opportunity to wind his arms around Bucky’s neck and haul down, proving he has plenty enough strength for a so-called invalid. The kiss sharpens when his weight collapses atop the injured man -- he can forget, for a few seconds, about any injuries -- and they writhe together until finding the natural balance filling hollows and settling in.

Time melts out of the hourglass, so much sunlight dancing over gold hair and his back.

That grunt of exertion alerts him through the fog settled over his senses. Blinking, he pulls back to check over Steve for any signs of injury, any proof he might have reopened a wound. 

Stupid to try this. They aren’t ready.

Bucky slides back to rest on his haunches, but those arms around his neck refuse to release him and he only serves to pull Steve to him.

“Where you think you’re going?”

“You can’t--”

“Let me be the judge of that. Things are more tender than anything.”

Who is he to argue with that earnest assessment? Bucky scoops his hand behind Steve’s nape to support them both collapsing together, the pillows flattened under their weight.

He feasts like a starved wolf, interspersing deep kisses with bites and the dueling of their tongues. Moments suspended like silk cords stretch as Steve rises to his touch, fingers coiled in his hair for a protective grip that never lets him free.

“I’ll never let you go,” he mutters.

“Good.”

Steve slips his legs tight around Bucky’s waist, caging him in a narrow space to move, most of that lateral. He shudders mutely at the feeling of warm calves locked against the back of his thighs, nothing but cotton and denim separating them.

The kisses begin again, but more fervent, an accoutrement to the slow-motion rocking that grinds his hardening shaft against Steve’s erection. The gentle frottage hastens the process of blood pooling hot in his core, but demanding squeezes nudge him forward so they rock together.

Caution tempers every touch he makes. He continues to knead at the nape and back of the neck, loosening up muscles bunched and tensed. Bucky slides his thumb around the bony knobs in a serpentine path leading him to the joint of the stiff shoulder and neck. Steve groans when he applies his thumb to the pressure point, starting to knead deep circles in search of the lock to pop the muscle to slackness.

He like he might do gently to Steve’s puckered hole, circling it before pressing the pad into the dark heart. 

Continued efforts pay off for that delicious groan and Steve rolling his hips, knocking the center of gravity in a tidal pull. Bucky buries his arm under the blond’s back, pulling them flush together like they might skydive.

A groan into his mouth is sweet poetry, the muffled staccato burst of shocked breaths loud when he rolls across the mattress to put Steve atop him.

“Better,” he murmurs. Safer that way.

Steve leans forward to reclaim his mouth, but his hands stay low around the flat belly. He pulls and tugs up the hem of Bucky’s shirt to expose his ribs in a vaulting point, lifted higher with such painstaking slowness.

Everything slows down. James feels underwater and longs to tear his shirt in half if that allows him to pull his lover back down. What the hell is the blond up to? He doesn’t know, but impatience breaks through the carefully erected restraint to avoid doing harm.

The heavy weight of vibranium and steel lies in the curving trough where the tailbone curves. Steve perches like some kind of sphinx in supine relief, breaking off the kiss to lower his head and suck on Bucky’s neck.

 _“Fuck._ Sweetheart, that ain’t fair.” 

“Who said fair was fair?”

The muffled reply at his throat sends minute shock waves up the column of muscle, radiating outwards from a hot, wet impact point. Suckling softly there always does him in -- his lovers have historically been quick to exploit the erogenous zone. Steve is no different, but he is in every way different, deferential to the proper forms of lovemaking and almost gentlemanly about the way his lips tighten up on the hot skin.

Bucky figures his soul must be pulled out through a sealed ring right into Steve, the way that lapping tongue captures his taste and maddeningly dances in captivating flickers. All at once his nerve endings go up in smoke, alight from the slowly progressing suction that traces inwards to his throat.

When he starts to tilt his head, the choice isn’t really his own. Instinctive defenses come to the fore, but Steve pulls down on his unscarred shoulder to keep the delicious track of skin open to him.

Bucky thrusts his hips in earnest, his cock hardened to full attention within the confines of his pants. His restless undulations have the desired effect of frotting Steve to equal hardness around the suckling, though he has no shame about the broken moans and sighs creeping out past gritted teeth and sealed lips.

It’s what Steve wants as payment for his indiscretions? He’ll give as many of them as necessary, bankrupting himself into hoarse silence, and still mewing if he has any power to do so left.

The situation is untenable for long, merely a question of who gives first. Decadent friction chafes along the seams of their jogging pants and pants, and Bucky has the unfair advantage of dense, rough material with which to grind into soft places.

Cries grow ardent and pleading into his mouth, not fully voiced as a demand. Even in lust, Captain Rogers is impeccably polite. That simply will not suit anyone’s purposes.

Neither of them want to pull apart but Bucky pushes him up by the shoulder to open enough space for peeling open his jeans, the better for the zipper to practically split down the center. A bit of heavy tugging finally separates the denim enough to work himself free, though the brunet grunts at a pinch in places far too sensitive to endure.

Steve kisses his neck and moves to his mouth, sharing a long, fluid exchange of unspoken affection and desire. He somehow manages to work his hand between them and gently strokes the length of Bucky’s phallus, palming the crown at an angle rubbing it right against his wrist.

For good as the stroking feels, the point about this is making up to Steve, not making out  _with_ Steve. His pleasure can wait as long as they make love.

“Straddle me,” he asks through the rough upheaval of his breathing.

Blue eyes crackle incandescent in the sunshine, and while he could argue, his captain does not. Bucky pushes himself up from the bed, his arm still protectively curled for support. Detangling their legs is the hard part, the loose clasp still wrapped around his thighs relinquished as Steve briefly ends up kneeling over him.

Bucky cups his buttocks and runs his hands over the muscular thighs, the envy of any Olympian. He separates thighs from Steve’s calves, pushing his knees up to point at the ceiling. The shift seats Steve right in the bowl of his hips, no longer on his knees but a dazzling, open sight.

He licks his lips. Steve still has those damn jogging pants in the way to block the view. The blunt tip of the crown pokes up prominently at the peak of the wedding tent, and Bucky can just imagine the slickness beading up on the crown. He growls, “Spread ‘em.”

For a moment they are locked in a balance of wills. Steve slides his feet further apart, supporting himself with his hands planted on the mattress beside them.

A handful of flimsy sweatpants material caught in his fingers gives as he pulls. Only minimal adjustment necessary -- he strips Steve with one hard yank, gratified by the way the heavy weight of his cock rises from his blond curls to smack his belly.

“No underwear?”

“I wasn’t exactly in the best state when they redressed me.”

“Clint,” Bucky says, and gives a slight shake of his head. That perpetrator he’ll take up matters with later.

Steve pulls one leg out at a time, relying mostly on Bucky to do the work. The discarded grey garment, flipped inside out, lands on the floor after a casual toss.

The pillows under his shoulders and neck give Bucky a plenty fine look, but needs more than a great view. He hunches his back and pulls himself a little more upright, still curved under Steve to be his throne of sorts. The only problem they’ve got now is lube. One easily addressed by pulling a bottle from the drawer in the headboard. If only everything were so easily done.

After coating his fingers, he draws a breath to quell the burning heat in his eyes and the eagerness spreading through his veins, quicksilver desire and champagne bubbles threatening to rob him of any control.

“I want you to let me do most of the work,” Bucky says slowly, deliberately running his thumb along Steve’s inner thigh.

“Buck…”

“You’re hurt. No strenuous activity, remember?”

There’s the crooked smile showing up, a stroke of sunshine in the dark. “It’d make things right to take away the pain I caused,” Bucky adds.

“When you put it like that, you leave a guy few choices.”

“I know. Terrible of me. You can take it out on me later.”

Steve sighs and arches his spine a little. As he does, Bucky slides the metal curve of his palm right under Steve’s balls, fingers curling upwards to slide along the narrow cleft. A little blind searching bereft of the benefit of touch is a tradeoff, but neither will the awkward angle of his wrist cause Bucky any lingering discomfort for any time to come.

The tight flex of the pink whorl tells him where he strikes bullseye. Gently he strokes what he hopes are soft circles, and given how the blond begins to rock in little circles, he pushes his fingertip in. Just a little at first, in and out, a regular rhythm not much past the first knuckle.

His hand lies wedged between those strong cheeks squeezed for balance, making the fit even tighter. Not in any rush, he feeds more of his grooved finger deep inside Steve, letting the moans and little jerks of the hips direct the speed.

“Oh, Buck, that’s good.” Steve breathes out shakily through his teeth.

“Tell me how good. I wanna hear you.”

Asking him to talk dirty leaves him blushing and hot, but taking more of the curled digit until he sinks all the way down to the base. “Oh yeah. Like sparks of lightning inside. Your finger’s hard, and oh, oh, fuck. I can’t clench too tight or else it feels so big.”

He huffs for breath while Bucky watches, intoxicated by the sight of his best friend coming undone in front of him, inches from his face.

“More.” Reasonable request.

“T-two, yeah. I want another. Give it to me, I think I can take it.”

Think? His greedy hole sucks up a second finger -- the middle, the longest -- like a vacuum. No sooner does Bucky manage to work the tip in than he feels the inexorable draw, the two exploring the velvet-soft walls of the tightly convulsing channel.

“I can feel you gripping from the inside.”

“They’re big,” Steve breathes out.

“Yeah,” he agrees and scissors his fingers apart. That gets him a frantic gasp and stillness breaking a second later when the tip of his finger slides a half-inch down.

Liquid splatters on his bare stomach. Steve groans and bunny-hops in place, landing a bit heavily. His knees spasm closer together and spread apart again almost instantly. _I love this man, so generous._ Bucky’s head is in a blur.

He wanted this to go slower, but slow is impossible while he draws figure eights and Celtic knots on that spot that causes Steve to seize up and his cock to bead precum in glazed pearls dribbling down from the crown.

“There, right there. Buck, don’t go any faster, don’t!” 

He speeds up a notch, blindly painting letters and hieroglyphs and anything he can think of while Steve’s cheeks turn deeper pink and his breathing becomes a broken bellows, though devoid of the wheeze of a collapsed lung. Bucky never stops listening for distress and finds none, only the ragged edges of rising excitement.

“Stroke your cock,” he says. No hint of a question lifts the last word.

Steve hesitates for a moment, leaning forward a little. That pins the marauding hand that ravishes his tight pucker flat next to Bucky’s cock. His weight rolls off the palm and wrist as he shifts, and fists his shaft.

“Yours,” he mutters, and loses any sounds that make coherent words. The massage of his prostate takes a faster tempo, but still short of sending him over by the touch alone.

Though it’s a very near thing, especially as he releases his cock as though electrocuted at a touch. The lighter, fast tempo he masturbates at mostly keeps him flirting with the edge, the strain sending beads of perspiration running down his brow.

Bucky smiles, if a bit strained, working his fingers deep in duets to prod him closer to the edge. “That’s it, sweetheart. You’re doing so good. Let yourself relax, just cum.”

Impossible as it may seem, Steve pulls himself together long enough. “Not without you,” he says around short gasps for air.

“I don’t need to first.”

“ _I_ need you to.”

That plea changes everything, at the expense of a sharp cry when Bucky pulls both fingers out. Lifting him up and down in the cowgirl position could strain Steve’s side too much, so Bucky pats the bed. “Lie here. Let’s make it easy.”

Steve otherwise all but collapses onto the bed, teetering off his perch in slow motion. They both shift around so Bucky spoons behind him, arm draped over Steve’s side and pulled into an embrace.

Guiding his slick crown to the puffy anus snug between Steve’s buttocks, Bucky lines up and gives slow rolls of his hips to work himself in. He makes no more than halfway, indulging in the tight muscular grip around his shaft, before Steve pushes back and takes the other hand all the way to the root in a go.

They both cry out together, hands clenched and bodies rigid.

“Not made of glass,” mutters the blond, thrown a look back over his shoulder.

Bucky can’t even form the words. He withdraws an inch and nudges himself back into the velvety cauldron, engulfed by a kind of decadence that smells of clean bourbon and shaving soap, the dusty lavender left on the pillowcases, and everything Steve. With his face in those golden locks, he is drunk in every sense; drunk on scent and taste and touch.

The only improvement would be a kiss, but they can’t risk that without losing the benefit of spooning and the ease of Steve’s flank upturned rather than pulled this way or that. He keeps that steady, firm tempo of embedding his cock as deeply as possible, Steve milking him with taut flutters of the distended sphincter stretched good and firm around his girth.

There’s no way to make this last.

Steve strokes his own cock in fast, short bursts of his fist that sends the darkened head popping through the oval ring of his fingers. Strands of precum glisten off his digits, frosting them as he groans with his mouth hanging open in acute bliss. Nothing that way to plug up the sounds -- cries, moans, groans -- and especially not when Bucky tilts to ravish his prostate again.

The quick, hammering strokes find no resistance except the quivering anal ring. They fall in a mad rush. Bucky succumbs to the tsunami driving him to beat out a tattoo and have Steve loosing his load on the bed, maybe even those fresh bandages. He wants cum on their hands and the loose-limbed indolence that follows. His hips slap into Steve’s ass, his cock disappearing inch by inch through the greedily squeezing rim.

When the blond bows his back like a harp string pulled too tight, the moment is clear. He tilts his cock up rather than out, and the slit bubbles with a white patina. His cum bursts out in a hot rope right up his belly.

“Buck,” he groans.

Bucky bows his head and sucks at Steve’s neck and shoulder, biting at the hot flesh as he feels his own control go careening off-center. The next thrusts are ragged and rough, his thickening cock ablaze from the firm pangs milking him to an orgasm. When it comes, he speaks his apology in broken notes, receiving absolution through Steve pushing back, accepting him exactly as he is.

Time splinters and boils off, leaving only a perfect sense of grace. They somehow end up entangled, arms wrapped around one another, Bucky sheltering Steve below the curve of his metal shoulder. Pillows gone askew support them in a sense, and the lassitude weighs heavy on their limbs.

He nestles into the curve of the blond’s back, pressing his chest hard to the natural broad plain. One leg wedged between Steve’s makes for a tighter spooning together, a guarantee neither of them will be going anywhere as sleep claims them.

“‘m sorry,” he thinks to mumble on the cusp of vertigo, barely awake.

Steve’s voice comes from far away, sure and warm. “Always forgiven. Always.”  


End file.
